Vision: MClouds - Computing on Clouds of Mobile Devices

When the people think of mobile cloud computing today, they typically refer to empowering mobile devices - in particular Smartphones and tablets - with the capabilities of stationary resources residing in giant data centers. But what happens when these mobile devices become as powerful as their personal computers or more? This paper presents their vision of a future in which mobile devices become a core component of mobile cloud computing architectures. The authors envision a world where mobile devices will be capable of forming mobile clouds, or mClouds, to accomplish tasks locally without relying, when possible, on costly and, sometimes, inefficient backend communication. They discuss a possible mClouds architecture, its benefits and tradeoffs, and the user incentive scheme to support the mCloud design.